Chicken Slayer

JoeDoe, reviewed in this week’s Tables for Two, is a great neighborhood spot in its own right, but with the misfortune of taking up space on a block that is better known as Prune’s place of business. Prune has almost absurdly long waits for brunch on the weekends (bring coffee) and a devoted following for its earthy menu and its chef and owner, Gabrielle Hamilton. Of course, all great chefs go through a period of apprenticeship, and in the 2004 Food Issue, Hamilton described her own first steps into animal slaughter, with a chicken. She begins, under her father’s instructions, by spinning the birds around several times:

He said this would disorient the bird—make it so dizzy that it couldn’t move—and that’s when I should lay it down on the block and chop its head off, with one machinelike whack. In my own way, not like a machine at all, I laid it down on a tree stump, and while it was trying to recover I clutched the hatchet and came down on its neck. This first blow made a vague dent, barely breaking the skin. I hurried to strike it again, but lost a few seconds in my grief and horror. The second blow hit the neck like a boat oar on a hay bale. I was still holding its feet in one hand and trying to cut its head off with the dull hatchet in my other when both the chicken and my father became quite lucid, and not a little agitated. The chicken began to thrash, its eyes open, as if chastising me for my false promises of a merciful death. My dad yelled, “Kill it! Kill it! Aw, Gabs, kill the fucking thing!” from his bloodless perch.

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